Tehran & Taste of eggplants and fashion

After a quick stay in Tabriz, here we are in Tehran.

We have not been writing here for a few days because we have been literally overwhelmed by the fantastic Iranian hospitality of Reza, Madhie and Lena and there were always things to do. It is great, after five plus week on the road to get to a place where it feels like home. There could have been no better conclusion to this journey.

It was also a welcome relief for Giulia's stomach, who had been eating the Iranian eggplant-based dish for way too long... (and this was not out of masochism, but more often than not it was the only available veggie option in any restaurant we went)

We have been hanging out with locals, watched the very fashionable Teheranians strut their handbags, scarves and high-heeled shoes in shopping centers and coffee shops, met some acquaintances we had done on the road in Iran, and of course visited a few museums in town (Golestan Museum, National Museum, and the glitzy and fascinating Jewels Museum).

We also spent a lot of time learning about the last 30 years of Iran from Reza and Madhie; overall in this trip we learned so many things about Iran I don't know where to start from (hopefully this blog gives a feeling for it).... For sure we both now wish to spend some time with the Iranian acquaintances we have at home to talk about (and more than before we learned not to believe what you read on your favourite Western media)

Many things to carry home as we will board our flights back to Italy in a few hours....

Gotta go now, while I am blogging here from Faraz's bedroom, Giulia is fashion-shopping like a true Teheranian with Lena....

Northwestern Iran

We are in Northwestern Iran right now.

We arrived in Qazvin and the after we went to Masuleh, which according to the LP
is one of the highlights of Iran, but it is actually a very disappointing village in the mountains,
please DO NOT GO there if have the choice.

The day after we visited Qazvin with a very nice Iranian architecture student that as usual we met on the street. He took us around and we had very enjoyable time together, speaking about arts and Iranian politics.

We left Qazvin and went to Soltanyeh, a huge mausoleum with the third largest dome in the world, unfortunately it was under restauration...The driver that took us there was with a friend that apparently knew everything about western phylosophy and arts, he knew Dante, Protagoras, Derrida, Pasolini and so on...

We then arrived in Zanjan, a very ugly city, but at least with the wonderful Takth e Soleyman ruins nearby. At night when we were having dinner we incredibly met the second Iranian in the same day who knew Dante (actually we fell very ignorant...), and even quoted some verses in Italian to us...

As told, Takht e Soleyman is really really beautiful, with an amazing vulcanic lake amidst the ruins, if you have the chance this a truly not to be missed place!

Tomorrow we leave for Tabriz and then we will continue to Teheran, where we will be hosted by an Iranian family (merci Dena, merci Mazyar!!!!:-))...

To top it off, here in Zanjan we are sleeping in the same hotel as the coach of the Iranian national rugby team, who is from New Zealand, a pretty nice fellow who telling us that rugby has not been banned for 5 or 6 years. They also made big efforts to convince the Iranian government that rugby had nothing to do with US traditional sports...So Iranian rugby players are really beginners but promising as he was telling us.

Now we have to face the main problem of the day: finding something acceptlable to eat for dinner...And it won t be an easy task...(Yes, Iranian cuisine- at least the restaurant one- cannot be defined as delicious... )

Iranian people and no inspiration (?)

Well...Actually we are not very inspired today, just because we did not do much yesterday...

Just went around with these two girls (very smart and modern) to see a bathouse and the bird garden in Isfahan. During the night we went out for dinner with some Iranian-Italian friends we have already mentioned...Basically for once we took it easy...

We must say that here people are very curious about us as tourists and almost every day we discuss with a few people, mostly young ones who are tipically very very modern. This country is definitely a big surprise: it is very different from how it is depicted on our own western media, especially regarding women condition. We never felt in danger and we always feel very welcomed, Iranian hospitality is just great: sometimes people go out of their way just to help you or to give you a ride to some place without asking for anything in exchange.

Another striking aspect, is that basically everyone has been asking us what do we think about Iran: Iranians, at least the educated ones, are very aware of the image that western goverments are projecting of them and very often they sadly ask us "Why did you come to Iran since everyone in the West thinks we are terrorists?"... In fact the lack of western tourism is very evident.

Needless to say we think Iran is a great place to visit, very complex and interesting to explore and discover...so Anita, you made the right choice!;-)

In the end, it seems we are more inspired than we thought...

Esfahan soap opera...

Today we are still in Esfahan visiting the most impressive sights in the city, that are the ones arounf Imam Square: Imam Mosque and Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, whose domes are simply wonderful! Another not to be missed sight is the Hasht Behesht Palace (8 Paradises Palace in persian).

We also keep doing strange encounters, two very nice Iranian girls with whom we are probably going to spend the day tomorrow and a couple of Iranian guides who guided us for free at some point. It is definitely a highlight of the trip meeting all sorts of Iranian people.

We have also booked the night train Tabritz-Teheran (170000 rials, 12 hours), for the night between the 16th and the 17th.
The bus Esfahan-Teheran cost instead 50000 rials amd it is supposed to take 6 hours (by the way we are doing Esfahan-Teheran and Teheran-Qazvin in the same day changing bus in Teheran, well let you know if interested).

For those curious about soap opera, just be patient for a couple of weeks;-)

Tourism and masochism, with an happy ending

Finally in Esfahan (for Anita: after a 7 hour bus drive from Shiraz 50000rials), which is supposed to be the most beautiful city in Iran...It seems to be, with its beautiful bridges and mosques...

However we had a couple of disappointments today: first of all DO NOT GO to shaking minarets a bizarre attraction(?) consisting in a guy climbing into a minaret and trying to rock it back and forth, it is not worth even the cheap ticket.

After that we climbed a hill with our flip flops to see the ruins of a Zoroastrian temple on the top, we decided that this was our last zoroastrian temple of the trip.

After that we went for a walk along the reknown Isfahan bridges longing for a cup of tea, but unfortunately all the teahouses near those bridges have been shut down by the government because there were too many unmarried couples hanging out there.

We also saw the cemetery of those dead in Iran-Irak war, it was pretty interesting, and a Savafid palace in the centre of the town.

We recovered from all delusions of the day by going to Jolfa, the Armenian quarter of the city which is actually the liveliest part of Isfahan, with plenty of cofee shops and young Iranians. We were eating our pizzas (Iranians seem to dig pizzas) we met an Iranian Italian from Piacenza and his Iranian friend. It was cool to see an Iranian speaking Italian with the Emilian accent. He was really nice and he told us many interesting things about the country, forbidden music, marriage tradition and alcohol.

Our impression is more and more that plenty of people basically do what they want especially in big cities. We wonder how much the current status will last.

Tomorrow we are going to see the Imam square and sorroundings and are looking forward to more encounters.

Wine, dissent and fast food in shiraz

Now we are in Shiraz, here everyone seems to be unhappy about Iran.

We met a bunch of girls of bahai religion who told us that they are constantly discriminated and they also complained that there is nothing to do at night in Iran for young people, except going to fast food restaurant and drive around...The same night we were looking for a coffee shop to hang out, we met an Iranian guy who drove us to one one of them but he could not join us because he was going to have a date with his girlfriend: the date consisted in driving her around since as he told us "Iranian girls, only speak". Anyway we entered the coffee shop which is actually a very western style fast food where everyone is dressed up as for a big night out, girls are heavily made up and boys have Hollywood haircuts. Everything looked very comical and a little bit sad...

The town of Shiraz is nice even if we were expecting something more, don t miss the bazaar which is really cool, even if traffic and pollution are terrible...Today we went to Persepolis which is much smaller than we thought, but quite impressive.

By the way, we are really really surprised by the lack of western tourists: even in Persepolis which is supposed to be one of the main attraqctions of Iran we hardly saw any of them. Please come to Iran!!

We also reserved our Shiraz-Esfahan bus tickets at Pars Travel on Zand street, they are really efficient and they seem to provide Iranian visa as well, for western tourists.

And finally we are writing as we have just come back from the house of an Iranian family that invited us for dinner, basically after meeting us in the street. They were extremely kind and we really enjoyed their company. We also found out that they watch Italian and European satellite TV where tehre s more naked women than ever. We wonder which idea they have about western culture...

Kerman and Mahan

We are in Kerman now, ready to leave for Shiraz by bus (55000 rials and 8 hours).

Kerman is a very nice village with almost no tourism after Bam earthquake...
Almost all tourists stay in our hotel: Akhavan, where the two brothers managing the place
speak good english and help arraging every kind of tour.

In the teahouse in the bazaar, we met an english speaking guide, Hosseini, who later brought us to wach some bizarre Iranian ritual sport, he organises trips to desert nere here...

Yesterday we went to see Mahan and Rayen, which have beatiful gardens and citadel and are a good reason to come here in spite of the fact that Bam has been destroyed.

We also saw Kaluts, which is an Iranian version of the monument valley.

Important!!! Yesterday night we discovered that the new LP editions of Iran has been published,
it must be really really recent because one month before leaving the only verision around was the one of 2004: probably all the mistakes we are listing have been corrected in this new edition.

After all it is not too hot, differently from what a few people told us.

Backgammon and inexistent monuments

Today we are still in Yazd, strange but true, visiting the rest of the town and taking it easy...

We spent the morning in the old town where we discovered that two not-to-be-missed sights

according to LP (Hosseinieh and Madreseh-e-Kamalieh), where simply an invention of the drunk author of the guide as the lady at information point desk explained us.



Then we went to visit an ancient caravanserai 60 km far away from the town, the place (Caravanserai Zein-o-Din) is really well preserved and is now set up as a hotel and restaurant,

where you can really imagine how it felt to stop by in the silk road times. We went there for a tea and ended up playing backgammon with the Iranian staff of the hotel, which of course played much better than us:-)



We are in our way at Kerman tomorrow, by bus (40000 rial, 6 hours).



By the way, more than usually here in Iran tourists are very badly dressed,
especially women, as they generally exaggerate in their compliance of the hejab...

First tastes of Iran: Mashhad, Qom, Kashan, Yazd

So. Finally we are in Iran, and there would be so much to write that I guess only a few glimpses are possible.

Iranians are very friendly, and seem always attracted by the possibility of practicing their English, so basically we meet people all the time. There are so many similarities between Iranians and Italians it is difficult even to start......
We have also ended up reversing the direction of the itinerary (we are now going north to south), which contributes to the trip being even more eventful.

Two days ago we arrived in Mashhad, the city of the Imam Reza shrine. We were overwhelmed at first by the amount of pilgrims in what is one of the holiest cities of Islam, masses of pilgrims and all women in chador (also Giulia has to borrow one). It is impressive and probably difficult for us to fully understand phenomenon like this, were there is explicit grief for someone dead more than 1000 years ago.
Note that if you are a foreigner you can contact the upfront and they guide you around for free, and even give you books for free, a very nice experience we truly recommend. Unfortunately, the current edition of Lonely Planet makes no mention of this.

But we were also taken away by the complexity of the matter of the veiled women.
The veil does not seem to prevent women to share feminine chitchat and jokes, as our fully veiled guide was doing with Giulia.
The veil also does not prevent at all some even flashy display of femininity, as we could see that same night at the Mashhad airport, with women wearing a skimpy veil, high heels, pink tops, heavy makeup, and thick eyeliners.

We also needed to leave Mashhad somehow, and due to the number of pilgrims our options were limited. We ended up in a nice travel agency, where we quickly became the local attraction (somehow they wanted us to go to Damascus), and found out it was impossible to fly to the south of the country as we originally planned.... so we decided on the fly to invert everything, fly to Teheran and proceed southwards....

We have no time to tell about the ride to the airport with the funniest Afghan taxi driver, who complained about Iran not giving him a driver licence at the same time as bumping into the car behind him (that was something hilarious).... and even less time about the young enterpreneur we met at the airport who very openly started to talk trash of all the current limitations of social life in Iran, and promised to invite us to some great house party in Teheran....

In the end, we took this night fly with Fars Air to Teheran, and from there a taxi to Qom (20 euros), another holy city with a pecular atmosphere, full of religious students from everywhere, from Iran to Pakistan

From there, we took another ride to Kashan (about 15 euros), a wonderful city of garden, teahouses, and traditional houses. We also went to Abyaneh, mysteriously mentioned by the Lonely Planet as a wonder of the world, but in reality just ok.
We noticed in Kashan that the time of green tea is over, and only black tea is now served. Maybe this is the only true border between Central Asia and Middle East...

We came then today to Yazd, again by taxi (35 euros), a beautiful old town we are starting to enjoy...

To Mashhad

By the way, we are in Mashhad, Iran, right now...

This morning we left Turkmenistan driving from Mary to the Turkmen-Iranian border. We said a few goodbyes to Mr Merdan & to Andrew, and right away we started to see the more delicate facial features of the Persians at the border post.

We hitched a ride with an Iranian truck driver to cross the few kms of no man's land between the two countries, until we finally arrived at the Iranian border. They did not really check our luggage, but some guy checked Lorenzo's face against the pictures in his passport for a good five minutes (you always feel strange when you are afraid someone might question that you are not yourself.....)

Iran looked immediately different from Central Asia, better roads and better cars. We found some taxi driver to bring us to Mashhad for 20 euros. We stopped on the way at some shop or tea-house, where we immediately bumped into another taxi driver who was speaking in Italian (he had fled Iran after the revolution a long time ago and had lived in Venice....).

After some more time, some more lovely Iranian music, and after the taxi driver shared his tobacco pipe with us (Giulia declined the offer), we finally arrived, on what turned out to be a day of religious celebration, to the holy city of Mashhad.